Redintegrated
by MerriWyllow
Summary: Tag for 3.24 "Strawberries and Cream". Lisbon visits Jane in jail. Rated T for language. Thanks to LittleMender for the discussion that inspired this, and for help with dialogue.


**Disclaimer: **If I owned The Mentalist, we wouldn't be having this conversation.

**Author's Note: **It's 4:52am as I finish this. If it doesn't work, I'm blaming the cough medicine. Lisbon and Jane don't have to be Zoe and Wash to avoid being Juiiet and Romeo.

**IIIIIIIIIIIIIIII**

They waited to tell her. After she woke, groggy, tongue dry and sticking to the roof of her mouth, world of pain in her shoulder and chest where the surgeons had dug around for the bullets, they let her come back to herself a bit, then sleep again under the weight of the pain medication. It was when she woke the second time that she got to hear Jane had shot the man who had answered her call on O'Laughlin's phone, that the other man had concealed a gun of his own in a newspaper, and that afterward Jane had calmly laid down his own weapon, sat down and drank his tea while awaiting arrest.

Cho told her. Cho told her the details an agent would tell another agent. She nodded her understanding, but did not answer.

Hightower told her. Hightower told her the details a woman would tell another woman. She blinked to show she heard, but did not speak.

She did not know what to say, or what to think.

IIIIIIIIIIIIIII

Two weeks in the hospital, six weeks of rest at home combined with torturous physical therapy, and she went to him in county lock-up. She was already seated when the guard brought him in. She looked at him, but did not open her mouth.

"Lisbon," he choked out in greeting. She took a breath, opened her mouth, as though preparing to speak, but closed her lips again. His eyes roved over her face, her shoulders, her chest, looking for signs of her injuries, of permanent damage. He saw a wire-taut weariness in the way she held herself. The familiar urge to deflect her displeasure by soliciting a smile or laugh surged in him but her stillness forbade it. He had not expected to see her like this, expected that the next time he saw her would be at his trial, bearing witness against him, steely and steadfast under the law, holding up under the weight of his betrayal of what she had hoped for from him.

"You've finally gotten yourself into trouble I can't get you out of," she said. Her voice carefully restrained to keep both fear and venom out.

"I wasn't expecting you to get me out of this. I intended to plead guilty and take my punishment, but the judge refused to accept it. Entered a plea of innocent on my behalf. She said this has to go to trial. Jury of my peers and all that."

Lisbon huffed out a choked laugh at this, thinking that no one on any jury they could conjure up would truly be Jane's peer. Jane smiled for a moment when he saw her thought.

"The lawyer Hightower found me wants me to plead diminished capacity, play on the jury's sympathy, spin them a tale of overweening grief. I'm not sure I want to do that."

She looked at him as he spoke, so many emotions chasing each other in her eyes that he could not track them all.

"Look, Lisbon, I know you are angry, disappointed, even ashamed of me. I'm sorry. I... I'm not sorry Red John is dead. I can't be. You heard the recording. You heard him say he was going to change his appearance. He was going to walk away. You don't believe that any more than I did. But he was going to disappear. I'm not sorry I made it so he couldn't do that. There's a little part of you wondering if I used you the way O'Laughlin used Grace. You feel used. That's what I'm sorry about. It isn't like that with us. Believe that."

"It's not like that? Then what is it like with us?"

"We are... we _were_ partners."

"Partners? Jane, for cops, having a partner is almost as much of a sacrament as marriage, but I don't think that went both ways for us," she said. Any other observer would have missed it, but he saw how hard she was working to keep defeat out of her posture.

"Oh, it more than went both ways, Lisbon. I gave you all I could."

"You didn't give me 100%. I don't blame you for that. You made it plain as day what you were there for."

"I didn't give 100% because I do not have 100% left. It may not have been fair of me to give you mere shards with so many pieces ground to dust, but some of those shards were more than just problem solving and case closing." The solemnity in his eyes was something she had not seen in a long time, not since he threatened to always save her, in that shipping container after they had been dropped in Mexico.

"Sure, some of it was game playing and scheming behind my back."

"I was trying to keep you from getting hurt. I admit I didn't do a very good job, but I tried. I'm not sorry you didn't get to arrest him. I'm not sorry you were never in the same room with him. I can't, the thought of you near him, I can't be sorry he was never within arms' reach of you. He would have seen, he would have taken you, too. Be angry with me if you have to, but I need you not to hate me. Please." As he spoke, his voice softened, "Do you know why I put the gun down and waited to be arrested? I had to kill him for them. But I stayed because of you." With a barely voiced whisper, he said, "Teresa, if I were going to use you, I would have used up every part of you." His eyes met hers and held them long moments for the first time since he started talking. She shuddered, revulsion and fear flooding her, together with a tiny, inadmissible , visceral bolt of ugly desire as she understood just how globally he could have inserted himself into her life. She looked away, needing an escape.

He went on, "I would have twisted you, bent you, done things to you like Red John did to the people he used. Give me credit for caring enough about you to not do that."

"I can't hate you, Patrick. I wish I could. It would be easier. There's not a damn thing I can do for you here. What you did, it wasn't right. I can't condone it. But I can't just leave you behind. Nothing I can say or do will fix this. But I'll be there on visiting days, you jackhole!" Tension all over her body slackened as she spoke.

"Jackhole?"

"Yeah. That sounded better in my head than it did out loud."

"Better than ass chapeau." He grinned.

"What about wankerror?"

"Oh, god, no."

"Douchebasket?

"Lisbon, stop."

"Flaming butt pustule?"

"Good Lord, woman, where'd you get that?"

"I had Van Pelt Google it, you cockwrinkle!"

"Guard!"


End file.
